The Seed Keeper, Diane Wilson
The Seed Keeper, Diane Wilson
3 Rating(s)
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The Seed Keeper
A Novel

Author: Diane Wilson

Narrator: Kyla García

Unabridged: 10 hr 43 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 06/15/2021

Categories: Fiction, Women, Family Life


Synopsis

Rosalie Iron Wing has grown up in the woods with her father, Ray, a former science teacher who tells her stories of plants, of the stars, of the origins of the Dakhóta people. Until, one morning, Ray doesn't return from checking his traps. Told she has no family, Rosalie is sent to live with a foster family in nearby Mankato—where the reserved, bookish teenager meets rebellious Gaby Makespeace, in a friendship that transcends the damaged legacies they've inherited.

On a winter's day many years later, Rosalie returns to her childhood home. A widow and mother, she has spent the previous two decades on her white husband's farm, finding solace in her garden even as the farm is threatened first by drought and then by a predatory chemical company. Now, grieving, Rosalie begins to confront the past, on a search for family, identity, and a community where she can finally belong. In the process, she learns what it means to be descended from women with souls of iron—women who have protected their families, their traditions, and a precious cache of seeds through generations of hardship and loss, through war and the insidious trauma of boarding schools.

Weaving together the voices of four women, The Seed Keeper is a beautifully told story of reawakening, of remembering our original relationship to the seeds and, through them, to our ancestors.

About Diane Wilson

Diane Wilson (Dakhota) is the author of a memoir, Spirit Car: Journey to a Dakota Past, which won a Minnesota Book Award and was selected for the One Minneapolis One Read program, as well as a nonfiction book, Beloved Child: A Dakota Way of Life, which was awarded the Barbara Sudler Award from History Colorado. Her most recent essay, "Seeds for Seven Generations," was featured in the anthology A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota. Wilson has received a Bush Foundation Fellowship as well as awards from the Minnesota State Arts Board, the Jerome Foundation, and the East Central Regional Arts Council. In 2018, she was awarded a 50 Over 50 Award from Pollen/Midwest. In 2018, she was awarded a 50 Over 50 Award from Pollen/Midwest. Wilson has served as the executive director for Dream of Wild Health and the Native American Food Sovereignty Alliance, working to help rebuild sovereign food systems for Native people. She is a Mdewakanton descendent, enrolled on the Rosebud Reservation, and lives in Shafer, Minnesota.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Angela M on March 21, 2021

This is a beautifully written novel, a marriage of history and fiction, and one that is imagined with so much of the truth of the past and present. It doesn’t matter that the names of the characters are not real. What matters is that what happens here represents real life events, and a culture and h......more

Goodreads review by Canadian Jen on November 09, 2021

Not enough stories can be read or written, of the natives being robbed of their lands, their culture, their children. And Never have I become more aware and grateful for the precious seeds we plant every year in our garden. This is just one story of people who lost their identity to the white man. Ano......more

Goodreads review by Krista on September 22, 2021

Thakóža, you’ve had no one to teach you, not even how to be part of a family or a community. You know what the grandmothers went through to save the seeds. That’s how tough you have to be as an Indian woman. And as a seed keeper. With The Seed Keeper, author Diane Wilson uses “seeds”, both litera......more

Goodreads review by Daniel on April 27, 2021

The Seed Keeper presents a multigenerational story of cultural and ecological depredations interwoven with themes of family and spiritual regeneration. Combining the voices of four women narrators, the plot spans one hundred forty years and gradually unfolds the generational and cultural trauma that......more

Goodreads review by Jonathan on December 04, 2022

As debut novels go, this is engaging, well written yet heart breaking. Inspired by a story Diane Wilson heard while participating in the Dakhota Commemorative March, it speaks miles for the value indigenous tribes hold for Nature's blessings and the sense of community, family and compassion. Rosalie......more